The Toughest, Smartest, Best Terminators of All Time

In honor of Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, our favorite new sci-fi TV show (not that there's much to chose from these days), PM's resident geek offers a thorough evaluation on the franchise's robotic evolution from the Governator to primetime.

True to their word, the Terminators are back. Fox's new TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, is a partial reinvention of the franchise that gave us one of our most treasured sci-fi clichés: the robotic insurgency. In the Terminator timeline--which was fleshed out by a trilogy of films, with another trilogy currently in the works--the world is predestined to be plunged into nuclear winter by an artificially intelligent defense network called Skynet that decides--in a moment of binary brilliance--that the quickest path to peace is genocide. The self-aware machines will win nearly every battle, nuking the planet to establish dominance, and then pick off the survivors. But plucky, tenacious humans, led by the legendary John Connor, will make an eventual comeback in the 2020s. The result: The occasional unstoppable, time-traveling robot assassin (nicknamed Terminators) which tear through Southern California, trying to kill off the future leadership of the humans before the war has even started.

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Each movie, and now the TV series, has given us at least one new type of Terminator, from Arnold Schwarzenegger's hulking T-800 to increasingly complex and nanotech-inspired villains. As our techno-anxieties have evolved, so have the Terminators. But are the robots getting tougher, or just harder to explain? And are the latest models a breakthrough in killer robotics, or low-budget, made-for-TV throwbacks? Here's a model-by-model breakdown of humanity's greatest enemies and reprogrammed allies.

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T-800

Appearance:The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The T-800, a grim-faced, sunglasses-at-night-wearing robot--or cyborg, for you purists--started it all in James Cameron's 1984 film The Terminator. In the Terminator timeline, these combat cyborgs are the inheritors of the present-day military's unmanned vehicle initiative. But when the film first came out, the T-800 was more of a sci-fi grim reaper, or, as Cameron put it: "Death rendered in steel." As its gleaming skeleton was gradually revealed, the T-800 came to represent what seemed horribly inevitable in the early '80s--the destruction of the world through out-of-control technology.

Construction

The T-800 series is designed to look and act like a human--albeit a massive, stone-faced bodybuilder with a thing for memorable one-liners. Consisting of a durable metal endoskeleton covered with functional human skin and blood, these infiltration models can blend into crowds, but can't stand up to intense scrutiny. Animals instinctively hate Terminators, so dogs bark at them, which is presumably when the T-800s stop skulking and start firing. This bot series is also used by Skynet on the battlefield, sans flesh and blood, in a standard infantry role.

Artificial Intelligence

It isn't the smartest of robots, but the T-800 can learn. Its neural network comes preloaded with cookie-cutter verbal interactions, and it can record and assimilate additional phrases that it hears, even mimicking a subject's voice (though not his or her inflection). The T-800 can also learn to adapt, which can lead to seemingly genuine emotions. In Terminator 2, the reprogrammed T-800 tells a young John Connor, "Now I know why you cry." But even in its most basic mode, this robot displays a clear spark of personality embodied in those infamous, awful one-liners--from an ominous, pre-rampage, "I'll be back," to the gloating, "Hasta la vista, baby," the T-800 seems to take pride in its work.

How Do You Stop It?

In the future, T-800s are susceptible to future-era weapons, like laser rifles and pulse cannons. In the present, they're almost impossible to damage. Their skin can be torn off with bullets, but the endoskeleton beneath is made of an ultrastrong, as-yet-undiscovered alloy. Without sci-fi armament, the only way to injure a T-800 is to improvise: hitting it with a vehicle, jamming a homemade bomb in its chest cavity or luring it under a hydraulic press.

T-1000

Appearance:Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The first Terminator movie featured the chilling image of a robot methodically gunning down the LAPD. In Terminator 2, Cameron's new model spends most of its time in the guise, and patrol car, of a Los Angeles police officer. This formless monster is essentially liquid metal, able to reassemble itself at will, and for some reason, run really fast. And the T-1000 embodied a very specific fear of a very specific research field: nanotechnology. To some extent, this was a natural extension of the first movie's premise of self-replicating machines, which, given enough resources and momentum, no longer need their human creators. When Terminator 2 was released in 1991, the apocalyptic potential for self-replicating nanomachines had just showed up on our collective radar. In his 1986 book, Engines of Creation, Eric Drexler had warned of the grey goo scenario, in which nanomachines proliferate, mindlessly, at an exponential rate, overtaking the world and snuffing out biological life. The T-1000's threat was closer to a supervillain's, but the larger threat of Skynet has echoes of grey goo, since the intelligent defense network wasn't intended to be evil. Its overthrow of humanity is the simple, tragic result of too much logic, and not enough compassion. Mainstream interest in--and anxiety over--nanomachines crested in the '90's, but has dropped off sharply since, as nanotech now seems more likely to keep our clothes wrinkle-free than to turn on its well-intentioned creators.

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Construction

Composed of a "mimetic poly-alloy," the T-1000 is a one-of-a-kind prototype, a colony of nanoscale machines that can assemble and reassemble themselves at will. This lets it impersonate people, grow extra limbs, turn its hands into knives and morph into liquid ooze. It can't pull off moving parts, so like the T-800, it has to either get close to its target, or use whatever weapons it can find.

Artificial Intelligence

Unlike the T-800, the T-1000 keeps its mouth shut. It never stops for a snappy comeback, never gloats and aside from the occasional mysterious cock of the head, never seems particularly evil. Depending on your perspective, this is either a more advanced form of AI than the T-800, or a more limited one. Is self-awareness of any use without empathy? Can you be intelligent without a psyche? Its only glimmer of emotion comes when the T-1000 is hit with a grenade, dumping it into a pool of molten steel--first it seems surprised, then, as it disintegrates, the robot creates an Edvard Munch-worthy face of howling fear and agony. If the T-1000's capacity to feel is limited to angst over its own destruction, that might be the most hellish kind of AI conceivable.

How Do You Stop It?

Small arms fire is almost useless, with most bullets harmlessly slipping into the T-1000's amorphous body. Since it's a prototype, it isn't clear whether this model was ever hit with a 2020s-era weapon. So once again, both in the present and the future, it's time to improvise. Shotguns knock it off balance. Explosions stun it, but not for long. The T-1000 is tougher than the T-800, since it can reassemble itself, even after being frozen with liquid nitrogen and shattered. In the Special Edition of Terminator 2, the robot gets a little glitchy after thawing and regenerating, but there's no telling how permanent this problem would have been, since molten steel is what ultimately finishes it off. As weaknesses go, molten steel is about as common, and hard to deploy, as kryptonite. In a world of unstoppable robots, this one seems particularly immortal.

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T-X

Appearance:Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Released in 2003, Terminator 3 is the most recent film in the franchise, but not the most beloved. James Cameron, who had no involvement in the movie, gave it his blessing, commenting, "In one word: great." But the box office returns weren't as solid as the previous films, and the reviews weren't as kind. So any discussion of Terminator 3's villainous new model, the T-X, comes with the requisite snickering from the nerd peanut gallery. A combination of the skeletal T-800 and the mighty morphing T-1000, this Terminator is the first to bring future weapons back to the present. It also, for the most part, looks like a lady. Avoiding any lame fembot jokes, it's worth pointing out that a feminine Terminator makes sense, both in the timeline (better to infiltrate enemy lines), and for today's sex-fueled media environment. The T-X also marks a shift in the franchise's technophobic through line--the T-X is basically a comic-book villain. But it is revealed that Skynet is actually a virus, and that its army is directly descended from present-day unmanned military vehicles. So while the T-X's transforming arm cannon and nanotech skin seem closer to Star Wars or Star Trek, the movie's "T-1" experimental autonomous air and ground vehicles (Air Force-built models just waiting to be subverted by a networked AI) are the more disturbing threat.

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Construction

The T-X has both an endoskeleton--a smaller, feminine one--and a coating of mimetic poly-alloy, merging old-school evil robotics with more far-fetched nanotech. So it can impersonate humans as well as the T-1000, and it has an arm that can sprout additional devices, such as a drill and, more impressively, a plasma cannon. During Terminator 3, the cannon is damaged, and the T-X scrolls through a long list of potential replacements, eventually settling on a flamethrower. Some of the other options are inside jokes, like the pulse rifle from Aliens, and something called the "Rumsfeld P81 Cauterizer." But internal weaponry is the kind of feature every Terminator should have, whether it's infiltrating a survivor camp or, as usual, trying to kill John Connor. Another major upgrade: remote operation of machines, including the human-reprogrammed T-850, by injecting them with nanobots.

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Artificial Intelligence

The most tight-lipped Terminator to date, the T-X doesn't make small talk, cut deals or say much of anything. Like the T-1000, it did let out an anguished screech during combat, but this model's AI seems at least as efficient as its mimetic predecessor. And the ability to control other machines--such as less-developed robots--indicates some serious processing power. But the T-X appears to be in the same conundrum as the T-1000. Is detached intelligence more useful or more hobbling? Is it even a little tragic?

How Do You Stop It?

Offensively, the T-X is the most advanced of the Terminators, able to deploy both internal weaponry and, through remote control of other machines, swarm tactics. The usual flurry of borderline-slapstick improvisation slowed it down, and forced the T-X to detach its own legs after being pinned beneath a helicopter. It was then finished off by a suicide bomb--a T-850 stuck one of its fuel cells in the T-X's mouth, and detonated it, destroying both models.

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T-850

Appearance:Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

By the third Terminator film, the humans were making a habit of sending robots to do their dirty work. Since the T-800 sent back to protect John Connor from the T-1000 did so well, the survivors began reprogramming as many Terminators as they could find. In a bleak twist (this is a great big spoiler, by the way), the T-850 that shows up to help John not only looks like the T-800 he befriended--and lost--in Terminator 2, but turns out to have killed John in the future. Heavy indeed, but technically speaking, this is essentially another old-fashioned Terminator, with a few small improvements.

Construction

This series is a minor upgrade from the T-800--nothing worthy of, say, a keynote address. The T-850 has flaps in its skin, allowing for easier access to its endoskeleton for repair purposes. Its vision is still blood-red, its skin still comes off in great, meaty chunks, and it still takes a beating. The main difference here is a new power source: two fuel cells that, when sufficiently damaged, detonate in catastrophic, backpack-nuke fashion.

Artificial Intelligence

Identical to the T-800's neural network, the T-850 has the same performance-limiting and enhancing issues--clear, distinct emotions. These may have come in handy in when protecting John, allowing the robot to obliterate the otherwise unstoppable T-X by overloading its own fuel cell. Of course, this is debatable. Is a lack of self-preservation the ultimate form of morale, or par for the course for a machine? The AI never got in the way, but its hard to say whether it was a benefit. At the very least, the T-850's ability to understand and adapt to human emotions might have made its fight and sacrifice more fulfilling. Don't laugh--self-aware robots are people, too.

T-888

Appearance:Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Dream sequences notwithstanding, the first Terminator we meet in the new Fox series is a T-888. After the apparent escalation in robot capabilities throughout the film trilogy, the T-888 feels retro. This is another skeleton dressed in human skin with metal showing through gashes on its face, and those familiar attempts at wit in the heat of battle. If this is the best Skynet can do, the humans must be winning.

Construction

The series is unfolding slowly, so the exact construction of the T-888 remains unclear. It's a flesh-and-endoskeleton Terminator, and since it resorts to slicing a pistol out of its own thigh to make it through metal detectors, this robot doesn't appear to have internal weaponry. Its vision is red, like the T-800s and T-850 before it, and it's strong. This is one standard-issue killer bot.

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Artificial Intelligence

In the first episode of the series, after opening fire on John Connor, but before following him out of a classroom window, the T-888 stops, turns to the room full of stunned students, and says, "Class dismissed." It then grimly goes about its business. In the meantime, John has secured a crucial head start in the parking lot. This is the first time we've seen a Terminator's irresistible need to mouth off lead to a tangible failure. Again, is this color commentary a sign of faulty AI, or is this another series of robots that are born malicious, but have the capacity for a wider range of emotions?

How Do You Stop It?

Hitting the T-888 with a sufficient jolt of electricity forces it to reboot, which takes exactly 2 minutes. Otherwise, the usual cocktail of high-speed vehicles and robot-on-robot brawling only serves to slow it down. When hit with a cobbled-together beam weapon in the first episode, the T-888 literally loses its head, revealing the weirdest feature on any Terminator. Horror fans might call it a "Re-Animator mode," but for whatever reason, the T-888 is able to function as a headless body, eventually reclaiming and reattaching its gleaming skull. Which brings up the obvious question: Does it really need a head? Why not use that precious space for a head-cannon, or a handy John Connor-killing dirty bomb? And the less obvious question: Was that gun specifically designed to knock the head off a Terminator, and leave the body intact, or are T-888 heads simply not attached very securely? One thing is for sure--headless Terminators are pretty funny. Wait, one more question: Is this show supposed to be funny?

Cameron Phillips (Series Unknown)

Appearance:Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

The cyborg heroine of the new TV series is a coy enigma wrapped in an oddly flirtatious mystery. Her name is Cameron Phillips, and she's the third Terminator to be stuck bodyguarding John Connor. "Are you a new model?" John Connor asks in the first episode. "You seem ... different." He's right. She's the least forthcoming robot assassin in the franchise, and since the show's publicist is keeping a lid on any Cameron-related revelations, declining to provide us with any info, we're not about to speculate too heavily. So here's what (little) we know.

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Construction

If Cameron has any nanobots to speak of, she's keeping them under wraps. She bleeds like a T-800, has no interest in remote controlling computers or machines, and goes into battle with her fists or whatever weapons are around. However, her eyes glow blue. And they do so on command. Like the T-888's loose-neck, this seems more like a Halloween party trick than an upgrade, but at least her vision is better than the 800/850/888 series, displaying her surroundings in full color. Cameron's only useful new feature is a ton of embedded sensors--in the second episode, she takes a number of readings just by brushing John's neck with her fingers, including his temperature and salinity (in other words, she discovered that he was sweaty). Then again, the T-X could analyze DNA samples with her mouth. As far as this franchise goes, Cameron has a long way to go toward impressing anyone.

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Artificial Intelligence

In terms of impersonating a human, Cameron is by far the most convincing of the Terminators. At least in the first episode, where she trys to endear herself to John Connor. She survives, even commands, a genuine conversation with all the "aw shucks" awkwardness of a teenager, and manages to lay the foundations for a human-robot crush. But the instant she drops her human cover to start protecting John, Cameron seems to lose her ability to talk in anything but a monotone. Whether she was working from a preprogrammed "first-meeting-with-John" script, or she only turns on the charm when absolutely necessary remains to be seen. But speech patterns aside, this is a robot with genuine feelings, reassuring both mother and son Connor when necessary, and casually offering a diamond to Sarah in the second episode because "diamonds are a girl's best friend." So far, Cameron's emotions haven't gotten in the way of her mission, or triggered a single bit of T-800-style verbal diarrhea. If it takes a little emotion to save John Connor, and possibly stop Skynet from ever being born, maybe this advanced AI will be the most useful feature a Terminator could have. Or maybe it'll just lead to shameful and highly saline human-robot relations.

How Do You Stop It?

Like the T-888, Cameron can be knocked out with electricity, with the same two-minute reboot period. And her skin can be scraped off, revealing those trademark metal components. So far, Cameron has survived bullets, head-on collisions, and a few melees with T-888s. She's doesn't look it, but this Terminator is at least as tough as the previous endoskeleton-based models, and maybe more so.

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Terminator Teardown

Without getting into comic books, video games, novels or a certain James Cameron-helmed 3D amusement park attraction, that completes our tour of the Terminator timeline's featured robot assassins. So how do these natural built killers measure up?

The Toughest

T-X puts up an incredible fight in Terminator 3, and seems to have the most contingency plans, from a concealed plasma cannon to the ability to hack into other machines. Plus it has a weird pop-out drill, which, in a world where heavy objects are constantly being smashed into or dropped on top of unwitting robots, is handier than it sounds. But in terms of sheer, damage-shrugging unstoppability, the top-tier Terminator is the T-1000. After all, the T-X is killed by a T-850 suicide bomber, implying a simple battlefield equation, with one older model given up per newer model destroyed. But who knows what effect that fuel cell detonation would have had on the physics-defying T-1000. If the only way to stop this mercurial demon is to have a pool of molten steel handy, you'd better develop a molten steel bomb, or start worshipping your new, shape-shifting god.

The Smartest

Artificial intelligence is handled delicately in the Terminator franchise. Since we're never face-to-face with the architect of the machine insurgency, Skynet, we're left guessing at the precise inner workings of its creations. The reprogrammed T-800 and T-850 are destroyed before their learning mode crosses a potential threshold, into a full-blown psyche. And though it's tempting to see these adaptive, humanlike models as having more intuition than their less emotive counterparts, every Terminator seems adept at improvising. So are the "good" Terminators smarter than the "bad" ones because they're in a read-write mode, or do we just like them more? And do the T-1000 and T-X have equally complex inner lives, that we simply never get a glimpse of?

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Let's make things easy. Which Terminator would most consistently pass the Turing test, convincing a human that it's also a human? Right now, it's Cameron, the blue-eyed protector of teenage John Connor. But if she turns out to be something else, more of an enhanced ex-human than a fleshy robot, all bets are off--that would be plain-old intelligence, and not the artificial kind. If that's the case, the T-1000 would win, as proven by its ability to mimic Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, and its effortless impersonation of a terrifying LA cop.

The Best of the Bots

So what's the best-designed Terminator of all time? Or, more to the point, in a grand robotic battle royale, which one would prevail? As far as we can tell, it would be a close match.

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The T-X could, in theory, take over all of the others--and that's it, fight's over. Or it could assume control of the T-1000, which, so long as the cage match isn't happening in a foundry or near an active volcano, would get knocked down a lot, but like a robot Hulk Hogan (or possibly Hollywood Hogan, his later, evil incarnation) always, always get back up. Without firing a single shot or throwing a single punch, the T-X would become mistress and commander of its Terminator opposition, either by assimilating the competition, or having its shapeshifting champion clean house.

But if a single suicidal T-850 shows up, the T-X's party is over. With an overloaded fuel cell constantly up every T-850's sleeve, the question becomes, Can a T-1000 survive that sort of devastation?

Of course it could. Since the T-1000 is such a world-shattering technological breakthrough, capable of perceiving without creating sensors, moving without constructing actual joints or subsystems of any kind, and, most important, functioning without any discernible power source, there's no way to limit its potential. Blown to smithereens, it would simply collect its smithereens, brush off its police uniform, and march off to the next massacre. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." From our perspective, the T-1000 is 100 percent magical, and the most dangerous and capable Terminator in history. And it's to everyone's benefit that the modern world is full of catwalks, and grenade launchers and glorious man-made lava. Even robots, it seems, have bad days.